“The numbers also showed that different types of paranormal entities appeal to different demographics. Women, for instance, are most likely to believe they live in haunted houses. College graduates are most likely to have out-of-body experiences. Unmarried white men are most likely to believe in UFOs.”

so, swms are into … what? … spaceships? anal probes? na’vi chicks? the thought of boldly going where no man has gone before?

people who believe in haunted houses or ufos/aliens are, to my mind, in the same category as people who believe astrology is something real … flakey! and we know from the gss that those people are not very bright (wordsum scores serve as a proxy for iq in case ya didn’t know that already):

but college grads are most likely to have out-of-body experiences? i presume they’re talking here about those “near-death” experiences, where a person feels like they’re floating above their body, rather than just gettin’ high. being college grads they can’t be that dumb so sheer stupidity can’t be the explanation.

autoscopic experiences seem to occur when there’s a disconnect between sensory experiences (related to the body) and the cognitive processing of those experiences (see here and here and here).

dunno why these should be the paranormal experience of “choice” for college grads. does it have to do with smarter people being more self-aware? and, therefore, they take more notice of funny, neurological discrepancies?